Sit holding a video camera in the storefront window when the
rolling shutter opens so that people passing by will think
you’ve spent the whole night inside and wonder why. As
soon as anyone makes eye contact, lift up the camera and
start taping.
With incandescent hands, sign directions from the shop to
the house you grew up in down to the last footstep. In the
winter do it in leather gloves. Toss muscular analogies and
loose vowel sounds over your shoulders.
I tell you the names of places so alien I believe they exist only on paper:
Auckland
Tibet
Oshkosh
Brixton
Brighton
Kerry
Odessa
Santa Fe
Kiev
Brittany
Osaka
Kunlun
Tyrol
Trieste
Zanzibar
Big Sur
The sum of my feelings about these each of these places lives
and dies in its name, in the few pictures that radiate from it.
Kent: mint sprig over the back of a fast horse heading toward
the gravesite of her rider. Dover: when the air tasted the way
blue paint does licked off a bleached seashell.
In the evening, light a lamp and find a small table; sit at it,
profile to the street. Read the newspaper under a hand-
written sign that says, “A Story.”
When the sky peels back, lay on the grass where your shadow
used to be and when I stand over you address me by your
name.
Marco Maisto’s chapbook The Loneliness of the Middle-Distance Transmissions Aggregator was a finalist in YesYes Books 2015 Vinyl 45s contest, and his poem of the same name won the Bayou Magazine’s Kay Murphy prize. With Michael Chaney, he is co-editor of the poetry comix folio in Drunken Boat #20. Marco’s art and poetry can now or soon be found in Spry, Fjords, Drunken Boat, Rhino (Editor’s Prize Finalist), 3Elements, Heavy Feather Review, Tupelo Press’ 30/30 project and Small Po[r]tions. He attended the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He lives in NYC with his wife, the painter Margaret Galey. Read fun chunks of language @MarcoMaisto and contact him through marcomaisto.com.